Field of the Invention
The invention, in general, relates to an musical string instrument and, more particularly, to a stereophonic plucked string instrument provided with an arrangement for amplifying sound.
Musical instruments provided with a body consisting of ribs placed between a back and a belly provided with sound holes, end blocks, neck, fingerboard and bridge and a plurality of strings are very well known. They may be bowed or plucked. Plucked string instruments such as guitars, lutes, sitars, mandolins, vihuelas, theorbos and the like are all based on substantially the same operating principle. A string is either struck or plucked thereby imparting resonations to a resonance box by way of a bridge and the belly, the latter being usually disposed parallel with respect to the back. The strings, at one end, are either fastened to a tailpiece, or directly to the bridge, from where they extend, over the neck and fingerboard to a pegbox provided with pegs or the like for tuning the strings by tensioning them appropriately. The resonance box, commonly known as the body, essentially is a sound box provided with a sound hole. This principle which through the centuries has hardly been changed even until today, is acoustically limited in respect of sound level and bass reproduction because in terms of physics the sound box is not equipped with sound-amplifying components. If it is desired to achieve increased sound levels and an improved reproduction of the bass or low notes, it has hitherto necessary enlarge the sound box. While this does indeed improve sound level as well as bass reproduction, it results in a deterioration of high frequencies. Double-basses and violones may be mentioned as examples of string instruments with enlarged bodies.
German patent specification 195 42 487 discloses a plucked string instrument provided with a back extending in parallel to the belly and in the body of which there is provided an intermediate plate disposed at an inclination between the belly and the back. This instrument may be played in the normal fashion, and the intermediate plate does not result in a deterioration of high frequency sounds. Furthermore, the size of that instrument may be reduced while its sound quality remains unchanged, so that it leads to a reduced consumption of exotic woods. However, their manufacturing cost is higher, and in the case of a concert guitar using gut or synthetic strings a different sound spectrum results. Such instruments, owing to the composition of their strings, produce relatively good bass sounds; but high frequencies cannot attain the brilliance of steel stringed instruments. On the other hand, however, steel stringed instruments do not deliver the warm sound timbre of gut or nylon strung instruments.